With an influx of social networking sites, it is important for businesses to not only utilize these sites, but use them when appropriate. We decided to break-down the top social sites according to their relation to business objectives.
Networking and Recruiting
- Xing - Professionals can network with one another with access to world-wide companies, search opportunities and find experts through the Business Accelerator application.
- Linkedin - Allows you to connect and network with other professionals for business related purposes including, career opportunities, job candidates and partnerships.
- Facebook - Connects friends across networks. Important for reaching a younger audience, recruiting, promotion and advertising.
- Ryze - Business networking site allows you to create networks and recruit members, promote events and includes a classified section for jobs and announcements.
- Plaxo - Online address book keeps contact information up to date, organizes contacts and connects people
- Tribe - Unique to each city, users can create a network, connect with other members and search/post events, reviews and restaurants.
- Collegerecruiter.com - Looking for qualified entry-level candidates, start here.
Promotion and Social Bookmarking
- Digg - Allows users to submit and browse content, including news, videos/images and articles, by category with potential for mass promotion
- Del.icio.us - Promote and tag items to this social bookmarking site with potential for extensive exposure.
- Reddit - Submit and search articles by category to drive traffic to your site. Earn points for quality submissions and gain more exposure by filtering to the top of the "hot" list.
- Squidoo - Great for driving traffic, the site allows you to create a lens on a specific topic, network with other experts and link back to your site or blog.
- Frappr - Community mapper and guest book establishes interactivity for users, while recording visitor stats. Embed pages with maps and allow users to pinpoint their location in real time.
- Furl - Drive traffic to your site and promote urls with this social bookmarker that allows users tag and share favorite urls; includes commenting and recommendation feature.